Flawed pandemic response slows path to social justice

When the editors decided to present this View from K Street, it was assumed that in a newsletter focusing on federal employment law, the federal government’s role would be a preeminent factor. Yet, when we view the United States from K Street today, we see a surging pandemic afflicting tens of thousands of Americans every day, one million-plus applicants for unemployment benefits month after month, millions more having lost their job-related health care, evictions for tenants and business bankruptcies looming, and the relief programs hastily enacted in the spring soon to expire.

What we don’t see is the federal government.

Congress left town for the 4th of July break and didn’t return until July 20, as if this were just another year. The long-planned August recess will take place as if this were just another year. As COVID-19 deaths near 150,000 and cases march toward a fourth million, the virus task force all but disappeared, replaced by the coordinated smears of public health officials.

Presidential speeches touch on every subject imaginable, but not the pandemic, as if silence were a kind of drug, aimed at dulling our fears for the future. States continue to be abandoned in the midst of a national emergency, left to their own devices, with shrinking budgets, rising caseloads, and frequently floundering leaders—who often seem to find their models in the absent Congress, the missing task force, and the distracting White House.